In the 1980s and 90s, American politics had one truth: evangelicals elect presidents. Ronald Regan, George HW Bush and George W all benefitted from the polling power of the world’s largest concentration of evangelicals – 94 million to be exact. So what will this critical American voting bloc do this year?

To find out, I spoke to Larry Holcomb, the founder of Urban Nations Outreach, but talking presidential politics with this evangelical missionary was not as straightforward as you may think. Sure, evangelicals have a history of supporting Republican candidates, but this year all bets are off. For Holcomb, the fact that Donald Trump would ban the very people he missions to from entering the country makes him an uncertain choice. Like so many evangelical voters, Holcomb finds himself caught between a Trump and a hard place.

The evangelical choice

He may be sitting at a table for one in the congressional cafeteria now, but for a time Ted Cruz appeared to be the one evangelicals were waiting for. He checked all the boxes: solidly pro-life, champion of traditional marriage, and a vocal proponent for religious liberty – and yet he never quite connected with what should have been his core constituents.

“I think he was faking,” one evangelical voter said of Cruz. A candidate’s ability to keep it real is something all of the evangelicals I spoke to mentioned, especially when it comes to nominating a supreme court justice. The supreme court is a priority for evangelicals – it’s been a long time since they’ve seen their voting power rewarded in the country’s highest legal authority.

More than anything I got the sense that evangelicals are looking for a champion to continue to fight battles on their behalf – like marriage equality and Roe v Wade.

Evangelicals showed up in force during the 2012 election and they failed to elect their consensus candidate, Mitt Romney and 2016 may be a turning point for evangelical voters who just don’t see a viable option in the choices laid out before them. Both candidates might be denied the power of their voting block if they choose to sit things out, and pick neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton.